"I do not quite understand it all, or what you wish me to do."
"Do?" I replied. "I want you to leave this house immediately,—now, before Guy can possibly be harmed by your presence. Go back to the depot and take the next train home. It is due in an hour. You have time to reach it."
"But it is so dark, and it rains and thunders so," she said, with a shudder, as a heavy peal shook the house and the rain beat against the windows.
I think I must have been crazy with mad excitement, and her answer made me worse.
"You were not afraid to come here," I said. "You can go from here as well. Thunder will not hurt such as you."
Even then she did not move, but crouched in a corner of the room farthest from me, reminding me of my kitten when I try to drive it from a place where it has been permitted to play. As that will not understand my 'scats and gestures so she did not seem to comprehend my meaning. But I made her at last, and with a very white face and a strange look in her great staring blue eyes, she said:
"Fanny," (she always called me Miss Frances before). "Fanny, do you really mean me to go back in the dark, and the rain and the thunder? Then I will, but I must tell you first what I came for, and you will tell Guy. He gave me ten thousand dollars when we first were married; settled it on me, they called it, and father was one of the trustees, and kept the paper for me till I was of age. So much I understand, but not why I can't give it back to Guy, for father says I can't. I never dreamed it was mine after the—the—the divorce."
She spoke the word softly and hesitatingly, while a faint flush showed on her otherwise white face.
"If I am not Guy's wife, as they say, then I have no right to his money, and I told father so, and said I'd give it back, and he said I couldn't, and I said I could and would, and I wrote to Guy about it, and told him I was not so mean, and father kept the letter, and I did not know what I should do next till I was invited to visit Aunt Merriman in Detroit. Then I took the paper,—the settlement, you know, from the box where father kept it, and put it in my pocket; here it is; see—" and she drew out a document and held it toward me while she continued: "I started for Detroit under the care of a friend who stopped a few miles the other side, so you see I was free to come here if I liked, and I did so, for I wanted to see Guy and give him the paper, and tell him I'd never take a cent of his money. I am sorry he is sick. I did not think he'd care so much, and I don't know what to do with the paper unless I tear it up. I believe I'd better; then surely it will be out of the way."
And before I could speak or think she tore the document in two, and then across again, and scattered the four pieces on the floor.